Zossima

To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Every one will think his share too small and they will be always envying, complaining and attacking one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation.... For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself.... true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

A life is not such a tremendous time to learn to express your ideas.

Henry Adams

He who goes into a crowd must now go one way and then another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the straight way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much according to his own method as to that of others; not according to what he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him, according to the time, according to the men, according to the occasions. Plato says, that whoever escapes from the world's handling with clean breeches, escapes by miracle.

Montaigne

Man is a small kosmos.

Democritus, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)

I am not obliged not to utter absurdities, provided I am not deceived in them and know them to be such....

We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty, but an advantage in judgment we yield to none....

This capacity of trying the truth, whatever it be, in myself, and this free humour of not over easily subjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; for the strongest and most general imaginations I have are those that, as a man may say, were born with me; they are natural and entirely my own. I produced them crude and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little troubled and imperfect; I have since established and fortified them with the authority of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom I have found of the same judgment.

Montaigne, Essays, Second Book, Chapter 17.

I have a soul free and entirely its own, and accustomed to guide itself after its own fashion; having hitherto never had either master or governor imposed upon me: I have walked as far as I would, and at the pace that best pleased myself; this is it that has rendered me unfit for the service of others, and has made me of no use to any one but myself.

Michel de Montaigne

Philosophy has not been able to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let every one seek it in particular.

Michel de Montaigne